Today, more information is collected about an individual than ever before in order to personalize advertisements and marketing, as well as products and services. Data collection prior art includes methods such as a variety of web analytics that collect user behavior while on the internet. Likes and dislikes, number of clicks on topics, previous search results, transaction trends and the like are all used with methods such as AdSense and others to personalize marketing to the individual products and services that the individual has shown interest in the past. Yet, collection of information is more difficult away from the computer, where vacationers, shoppers and the like frequent. Furthermore, some individuals may wish to have information collected from them, while others may not. Likewise, privacy is also a concern between some consumers who like to receive advertisements and others that do not.
It is well-known to those in the art that relevance-driven advertising yields better results than general digital marketing and merchandising techniques. WO 2008170176 A2 illustrates a method is used wherein advertisements may be sent out to consumers who “opt in” to a given advertisement network. In some embodiments advertisements may be sent based on the user's personal preferences, while in other embodiments, directed advertising may be based on the user's search history. EP 2357035 A2 discusses a method is used wherein an advertising server sends advertisements to an advertising engine, which is capable of receiving the advertisements through a given application.
US published patent application 20140136309 describes a method to pay electronically with a single financial card from a single account. Herein, an intermediary account is utilized to make a payment. First, a transaction-processing request is sent to an optimization engine, which then processes the information as directed by a database. A second transaction request is then sent to a financial instrument of the intermediary account such as a credit card. In some embodiments, the financial instrument is selected to benefit the consumer. For example, in some cases the financial instrument with the most rewards may be selected. Similar methods are described in prior art such as US published patent application 20140136353 and WO 2015009427 A1.
US published patent application 20120130885 describes a method wherein a buyer is identified with a given institution. Some embodiments include methods wherein a time interval is used to add security, while in other embodiments biometrics may be used to identify the user.
Described in US published patent application 20090287564 is a method and system to process a transaction. Herein an account is selected by given computer instructions. In some embodiments these instructions select the account for the transaction based on given rewards information.
Described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,489,112 is a method and system to send awards to a mobile phone, when the mobile phone enters an enclosed space. The phone is detected when it replies to an ultrasonic sound sent by a transmitter within the enclosed space. A computer server then responds by sending an award to the mobile phone. In some embodiments, the enclosed space may be a retail store. The retail store may then, as in one method, recognize the award as having monetary value.
US published patent application 20130707895 is a method and system to advertise marketing information to a mobile device. The method described utilizes a series of tracking devices and tags along with a custom sales presentation module to communicate and send advertising and monetary rewards information to a user's mobile device. Advertising information is displayed graphically to the user and in some embodiments the user may respond to the advertisements.
Described in US published application 20130282474 is a method and system to provide rewards to a mobile computing device. In some embodiments as described herein, the mobile computing device is a multi-dynamic card, which is utilized to receive rewards based on the information it may give to a merchant terminal. The more information the card provides, the more rewards it receives. In some embodiments, the reward may only be activated and used after the multi-dynamic card has been shown to the merchant terminal.
Some prior art, such as the method described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,775,241 uses a POS system to advertise rewards to the consumer. Herein, a user is able to scroll through a series of different rewards options as in some embodiments, while also being able to store loyalty information on his smart card as in other embodiments.